The visual appeal of labels and promotional display material is often a key factor in getting consumers to notice, and potentially buy, a product. Therefore, methods and techniques that add visual appeal to a product can potentially be very valuable. For example, retail products having labels that variably emit light or otherwise change optical properties when a customer is in the vicinity may attract an otherwise uninterested customers to the product.
Generally, construction of such labels may include a transmitting device, a receiving device and some type of optical element controlled by a power source. Often times however, variably improving the visual appeal of a product utilizing such labels is not cost effective. For example, the cost of attaching an individual label to each of a number of relatively inexpensive articles may outweigh the benefits of increased attention to the product. More advanced methods such as the ability to wirelessly control the visual output and integrating intelligent elements with the optical element only further serve to increase the expense.